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他 vs. 她 was invented in order to maintain compatibility with Western languages, and using 他 in place of 她 is not considered grammatically incorrect, and you don
by qiqing 8y ago
他 vs. 她 was invented in order to maintain compatibility with Western languages, and using 他 in place of 她 is not considered grammatically incorrect, and you don't learn to write both of them until you start to read and write in school, not when you're a baby learning to talk.
For instance, when my birth certificate was translated into English, there are male pronouns littered everywhere because the inexperienced translator didn't give it a second thought, even though the gender field was clearly marked as female.
French, though is particularly brutal for Chinese native speakers, because not only do you have to consciously track each human speaker's gender and whether they are in groups of mixed males and females or all females, but also track the arbitrary genders of objects.
- FabHK 8y agoAh, interesting! Try German, with 3 genders. :-) Having said that, learners of Chinese need to memorise which measure word goes with any given noun, and there are more than 3 of those!
- monocasa 8y ago> but also track the arbitrary genders of objects. That's still better than having to keep track of measure words in Mandarin. : )
- chillacy 8y agoAs a learner of both I have found French speakers to be far less forgiving of mistakes in gender, probably because it’s unavoidable. In mandarin you can use a catch all counting word and people still understand. In French it seems to really confuse speakers when you mess up gender.